Field walk 17th October 2015; East Bergholt
Site context
East Bergholt, with its light, sandy soils and position on the high ground of the Stour Valley, has been
good farming country for millennia. This map, the British Geological Survey of 1822 zoomed in on
East Bergholt, shows the Stour as a natural highway along the bottom, and the sand and gravel soils
of the high land in pink.
The field surveyed is within that sandy soil area, a little to
the east of the brick clay outcrop shown in yellow just above
the words “East Bergholt” – its placement on a modern map
is shown below. At the bottom of the field, following the
direction of the arrow, is a ditch with a permanent spring,
following the line of the paleo river still just visible in the
field beyond the hedge line. The field slopes gently up
towards the top, with several platforms.
The A12, possibly still following the route of the Roman Pye
Street, runs along the top of the field. Metal detecting
evidence has shown continuous land use from very early to the present day. Large quantities of
Bronze Age and Neolithic worked flint and some pottery, plus evidence of late Bronze Age metal
working, have been found further to the east and south of this area. With the fields immediately to
the south now threatened with development, it was felt that a field walk would provide useful data
on the presence of any habitation in the field surveyed, and might suggest the extent of prehistoric
activity in the area.
Participants / briefing
About 40 people, from East Bergholt and the surrounding villages, attended a briefing session on the
morning of the field walk. The site context was discussed, and finds from the area were passed
around, including Neolithic and Bronze Age flint tools, Samian ware, tesserae, and burnt flint. I also
gave a talk on the identification of flint debitage and tools, and people intending to go on the walk
were encouraged to handle both knapped flint and natural or plough-struck lookalikes.
31 people went from the talk to the fieldwalk. They were asked to pick up anything manmade.
Fieldwalk methodology
The methodology used was that developed by the Cambridge Archaeology Field Group.
http://www.cafg.net/docs/articles/What_is_fieldwalking.pdf
The field had been ploughed and harrowed, with no distinct plough lines, and so walkers were asked
to create their own transect lines. The team was split into 24 units, evenly spread from the hedge
line at the start of the field to an oak tree providing a clear measuring point at the far point of the
field walk. (No further exploration was made, as the landowner had requested as little disturbance
as possible to his game birds.)
The walkers were then asked to create a
transect line by fixing on a point on the
horizon, and walking 30 large strides towards
it; the line was then dressed to ensure roughly
30m transects, and to maintain an even
distribution of people. They then returned
along this initial segment of a transect to pick
up a collection bag, and then slowly walked
back up it, bagging all finds. At the top of the
segment, the bag was tied and left for
collection, whilst the process was repeated for
the next 30m segment of transect.
In all, 5 segments were walked, to the end of a historic field boundary.
Processing / categorisation
The categorisation suggested by the protocol was followed, namely;
Ceramics


building materials (such as bricks, tiles and tesserae)
pottery of all types, including clay smoking pipe fragments.
Lithics


lithics - cores or debitage (waste) and burnt flint.
flint tools.
Bone and shell

Shells out of their context (i.e. sea oysters, mussels etc found miles from the sea)
Glass and metal were collected – the participants were asked to collect anything man-made – but all
finds were modern and were discarded, along with shotgun cartridges, plastic, etc.
An initial sort was carried out after the field walk to weed out anything neither man-made nor
covered above. It was clear that even though few people had done this activity before, they were
making intelligent choices – even though fairly large quantities of plough-struck or frost fractured
flints were discarded, there was an obvious recognition of what a striking platform or a bulb of
percussion looked like, or what would make a good flake to turn into a casual tool.
The residual finds were brushed free of mud, categorised, and plotted on the table below.
Results
Fieldwalk table.xlsx
Map
N
S
Conclusion
As expected, most activity is taking place along the boundary of the paleo river. This is particularly
striking for flint tools (all scrapers), where there appears to be a cluster of habitation to the bottom
left, and another towards the top right, of the map. (Chance finds of scrapers whilst metal detecting
confirm that hypothesis, with several more scrapers found along the track, and another cluster on
the far eastern edge of the field. See PAS records for the field and Appendix for details.)
There is also an apparent cluster of tile to the north of column X on the map, with a more random
scatter elsewhere.
The number of flint tools – 22 in this exercise, with as many more from chance finds whilst metal
detecting – strongly supports the hypothesis that this area was rich in prehistoric activity, and is
indicative of a settlement, as well as an ancient pathway. The presence of a Langdale Vl type axe
(see PAS record for the Moores Lane field) on the development side of the paleo river further
supports this, and takes the timescale back through the Neolithic.
I would like to thank everyone who took part in this exercise, including Old Hall for their hospitality;
all those who came on the walk; the people who helped me tabulate the results; the landowner; and
the tenant, whose crop is now safely in!
Nicola Moxey
23/10/2015.
Appendix 1 – Flint tool finds outside of the field walking exercise
The following map shows the distribution of flint tools found by the author from June 2015, either
whilst walking the field margins and tramlines (the field had a crop of broad beans, allowing rather
poor ground visibility), or whilst metal detecting. Again, there are clusters of tools, strongly
suggestive of a settlement site. The first batch of these finds are at the time of writing (27th Oct
2015) being lodged with the PAS, and the others will be presented shortly.